Roscommon Football: Keith Duggan asks one of the country's most gifted forwards about his intercounty career with Roscommon. Is it over? And if it is, why?

It was all over for Jim Morrison at 27 and Jimi Hendrix checked out at the same tender age. Frankie Dolan has never claimed to be a rock and roll star, but sometimes it is as though he might as well have been. Frankie heard he was all finished as a Roscommon footballer on Shannonside radio at 10am on Tuesday, not long after he started work in Roscommon town post office.

Over the years, Frankie Dolan has grown accustomed to hearing startling bulletins about Frankie Dolan over the airwaves. It comes with the territory of being Frankie. Generally regarded as the most naturally gifted forward to play for his county in the last 10 years, Frankie somehow developed the reputation for being a troublemaker in a GAA county that specialised in trouble.

John Maughan, the charming Mayo man with a steel temperament, was not interested in finding out first hand. With a snap of his fingers, the totemic figures of Roscommon football were banished - Shane Curran, Michael Ryan, Francie Grehan, Nigel Dineen and Frankie Dolan. The Wild Bunch, gunned down in one swift announcement. Only in Roscommon could a pre-season squad selection generate such controversy.

If Frankie Dolan were to live up to the public image, we would find him drowning his sorrows in Bozo's of Athlone and vowing revenge. Instead, he adds some turf to the fire in his house on the Roscommon-Westmeath border and ponders a development that is, even by Roscommon standards, remarkable.

"It baffles me, really," he says. "And it is really disheartening for the boys after giving so much service and hoping to be called back and hearing it like this. I can't see that those lads were dropped because of football abilities. They have stated they are going for a youthful approach and that's fair enough.

"But I am only 27. Michael Ryan is 27. Francie Grehan is 30 and Shane Curran is 31 and could play for another five years if he wanted. Nigel Dineen has put in some years for the county. It would be a pity if it ends like this. But if that is the case, I know I would like to be told. I would like to know where I stand because I would still like to play at the top level.

"I will always want to play for Roscommon, but if it is not to be, then maybe there are other counties I could play for. You want to get as much out of it as you can and I reckon I have another two or three years left. Roscommon is a proud football county and people who know me know I love playing here. It would be sad if it ends like this, but life goes on and tougher things will happen than a decision over football. But if this is the case, then I would like to be able to consider my options."

None of this is delivered in anger. Dolan appreciates that, from a distance, the state of Roscommon football must look like a mess and is keenly aware that his own reputation has diminished. Tom Carr and Val Daly, both respected football men, came to Roscommon in good faith and left broken and frustrated. Dolan had differences of opinion with both and in the whispered way of GAA gossip, word spread that he was a hothead and difficult to manage.

Under Daly's stewardship he remonstrated with a selector, Séamus Killoran, after a championship game against Mayo. It led to his automatic release from the county panel for the second time. And despite subsequent meetings between members of his club St Brigid's and the county board, he was not invited to return.

"The first time it happened, I withdrew my own services from the county panel. That didn't go to press at the time because the club was keen to try and smooth things over. What happened then, after the Mayo game, I was disappointed just to get five minutes and I had words with a selector. And I got dropped for that. If every player was dropped for having words with a selector, there wouldn't be a lot of lads playing football.

"I heard I was dropped that time from David Dibble on RosFM. It was a disaster. And I know how it looks. If I was reading about Frankie Dolan, I would be thinking, 'how would you handle this fella?' But I know what I can do and the work I put into this. And it just paints the wrong picture of me.

"Managers come and go and they leave with a good name but I am suffering the whole time. Like, I made a few mistakes, I suppose. But I don't know if having words with a selector after we lost a match counts. I thought I was well worth maybe a half hour in the match and that I might have come in and got a few points."

The problem was that the deterioration in Frankie's relationship with Carr was stacked in evidence against him. That demise began, he believes, early in the league of 2004, when Roscommon were expected to push hard for promotion.

"But we started losing league matches and I suppose Tom came under pressure. At around that time, Tom brought in a new trainer and our old trainer Des (Ryan) was snapped up by Galway. And training wasn't a patch on what it used to be - I felt anyhow.

"The team wasn't as fit as it should have been or mentally right. It was frustrating. Tom Carr was a good manager, to be fair. But that trainer had to be let go and that showed that there was a problem there. Under John Tobin, we were doing weights two and three times a week and then, when all the chaos started, there was none of that going on. There was no improvement in any aspect of Roscommon football. Players weren't focused and it showed up in the end.

"Average teams were beating us. By the time it came to the Connacht final (against Mayo) I got injured and was dropped. And Tom Carr never spoke to me from that game on. We played Dublin in Croke Park in the qualifiers and I got six or seven minutes of a game."

The circumstances in which Carr left Roscommon were depressing for the county. As always, the Dublin man had been enthusiastic and full-hearted in his commitment and the previous summer, in 2003, Roscommon showed flashes of genuine promise against Kerry in the All-Ireland quarter-final at Croke Park. Dolan, in the only full game he ever played at the grand stadium, hit 1-3. "Should have been about 2-6," he grumbles.

It was a slightly madcap, high-scoring affair which finished 1-21 to 3-10 and it marked a gracious exit for a Roscommon team who enriched the championship with a series of close and gripping qualifier games. The jewel of their summer was against Kildare, a match defined by Dolan who cut loose for 13 points, landing the score that brought the game to extra-time and then nailing a late, terrific point from the sideline that broke the Lilywhites.

In warmer times, Carr remembered that Dolan had sought his advice as to what to do with the ball. "Just kill it," Carr instructed tersely. Dolan floated it over the bar, engaged the manager with a quick wink and, with havoc reigning throughout the stands, quipped, "is that dead enough for ya, Tom".

Carr loved that irrepressible boldness and adventure, the very opposite of the qualities that he brought to the game as a player and manager. He loved witnessing a natural ballplayer at the height of his powers when it mattered most. But the most remarkable aspect of Dolan's magnificent 13-point haul was that he had delivered 12 against Offaly the week before. Twenty-five points in two tough championship matches represents one of the more prodigious feats in modern championship lore.

"I was proud of it, yeah. But I am not in this game to blow myself up. It was just one of those things I will probably never do again. After five minutes I thought I would be coming off because (Brian) Lacey was roasting me. The same against Offaly - Cathal Daly had me hammered for 20 minutes. It was nice. But the highlight for me was winning the Connacht championship in 2001, with Gerry's (Lohan) goal in the last minute. That was my best day in a Roscommon jersey."

He admits that seems like a long time ago now. Since then, there have been too many rumours and headlines. The mostlurid moment came courtesy of a Sunday tabloid front-page headline claiming that the Roscommon players had run amok in a Derry hotel room, wrecking a room and getting down to brass tacks in the snooker room.

"Like we were a team of superstars from England. This was just a bunch of Joe Soap Gaelic footballers. Most of it was rubbish. It was said that we caused thousands of pounds of damage. There was no damage caused. It was a bit embarrassing, but around home it was treated as more of a laugh. You had to laugh."

But maybe it reinforced the image of Roscommon football as containing more than its share of jokers. That the county board were recently embroiled in allegations of financial irregularities did not help matters. It was small wonder that the search for a new county manager was treated as a matter of public interest. The subtext seemed to ask: "Who would be crazy enough?" Dolan says he was pleased when John Maughan was finally declared as the new boss.

"I don't really know the man. But he got the best out of Mayo and I felt he would come in here with his own ideas, that it would be a fresh start. And now it seems back at square one again. You know, things happen in every county. But all the top counties sort out their house in private. I don't know why everything in Roscommon has to be done so publicly, but it would want to change rapidly."

Not that Dolan is sitting around moping. Tomorrow, with impeccable timing, he features on television in the Connacht club final where St Brigid's meet Salthill. Dolan kicked seven of his team's 11 points in the semi-final victory over the Leitrim champions. He may be Roscommon's best forward, but whether he will wear the blue and primrose again remains to be seen.

That decision is out of his hands. In the meantime, playing with St Brigid's is a welcome escape and he cannot wait for his next football match.

"Hey, this is a Connacht final," says Frankie Dolan. "Anything can happen."

Watch this space.